how<\/em> he did it.<\/p>\nMy godparents were the first people the Ogre called when we found out I was pregnant with Sienna. Their son was one of his roommates, but I had never even met them. All I knew was that they ran a crisis pregnancy center. The Ogre wanted to talk with them before we told our parents, before we made any plans, really, because we had no idea what to do. So we drove out to Ft. Worth one afternoon to have dinner with them.<\/p>\n
I was horribly nervous. I didn\u2019t know how they would see me, but I had my suspicions. From the outside, the facts were stacked against me \u2014 drug addict, got involved with a good guy and then got knocked up? There\u2019s really only one word for that kind of girl. I may have known who I was on the inside, and known that my life had taken a sharp deviation from everything I was and had been in a short, horrible amount of time, but no one who hadn\u2019t known me before knew that. And no one just meeting me owed me the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n
I actually felt like I was going to throw up when the Ogre rang the doorbell. Then my godmother threw open the door, and my godfather wheeled into the room behind her and shouted, \u201cOh, she\u2019s pretty<\/em> \u2014 I get to hug her first!\u201d Before I could catch my breath, I was engulfed in one of his enormous, no-holds-barred hugs.<\/p>\nThere was a lot of hugging that day, and some tears, and a lot of laughter. By the time we left, I felt something that I hadn\u2019t felt in ages \u2014 hope. These two people, who had spend their lives helping women and men in crisis pregnancies, did not think we had ruined our lives. They didn\u2019t admonish us to give up the baby, or tell me that I was unfit for motherhood. I don\u2019t believe they ever thought I was unfit for motherhood, not even for a second. They believed in me before I knew how to believe in myself, and they loved me when I thought I was unworthy of love.<\/p>\n
That was the gift my godfather brought to the world \u2014 unquestioning, unconditional love. That doesn\u2019t mean he accepted or overlooked sin \u2014 in fact, one of the first things he said to the Ogre and I that evening was \u201cshame on you.\u201d Then he said, \u201cnotice that I have one finger pointed at you and three pointed back at me.\u201d He expected us to turn our lives around, but he also understood how hard it would be. He loved us unconditionally during the arduous, faltering path we took to get where we are today.<\/p>\n
I know that\u2019s how he felt about every mother who came through the doors of Mother & Unborn Baby Care. I know that\u2019s how he saved so many women and children \u2014\u00a0 he loved them. He believed those women could be mothers because they already were, and he told them so. He believed in women when no one else did, when they no longer even believed in themselves. He saved thousands of lives, and souls, by doing exactly what Christ told us to do \u2014 love one another, as He first loved us.<\/p>\n
It seems so surreal that he\u2019s gone. I can\u2019t quite believe that if I were to walk in his front door, he wouldn\u2019t be waiting for me in his wheelchair, with a prayer card or a rosary for me in his pocket, ready to engulf me in a hug and then order me to sit down and put my feet up. It\u2019s horrible that I won\u2019t see him again, in this life at least. And even though I know he\u2019s praying for me and baby Stormageddon from heaven, just like he always did on earth, it doesn\u2019t take away the loss or the grief.<\/p>\n
Ora pro nobis, Godfather. I will miss you every day.<\/p>\n
In your charity, please pray for the soul of my godfather, and for the family he leaves behind, especially my godmother Pat<\/em>.<\/p>\nEternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yes, I am still pregnant. We had a false alarm last Thursday night, and later that same night my godfather died, so I haven\u2019t been feeling very bloggy. I\u2019m not going to lie, it really sucks to be due any minute at the same time that someone extremely dear to me has died. Practically, it\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[309,311,222,310],"class_list":["post-5238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-birth","tag-crisis-pregnancy","tag-death","tag-godfather"],"yoast_head":"\n
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